KAWARTHA LAKES-Henry Sternberg was a fourteen-year-old in Germany when the Second World War started, and he was drafted to work as cook on a boat during the conflict. As was the case in many families, the war was a traumatic experience, and one that he would never talk about with his children. After the war, he was eager to emigrate. When he first came to Canada, he worked in the Sudbury mines to pay off his passage across the Atlantic. Once he had paid off his debt, he moved on to Toronto, joining a construction union. He worked on a crew that helped to renovate the Royal York Hotel. “I think this is when his love of building began,” Monika muses.
In 1956 Henry returned to Germany where he met Gertrud Grape—who had not had the opportunity to go to high school and was working as a maid. They married within two weeks, and she returned to Canada with her new husband. They settled in Aurora, Ontario, where he worked for Upjohn pharmaceutical company. Henry went back to school and obtained his stationary engineer papers and could operate the boilers and equipment in the factory. Gertrud was a seamstress, and was proud to work for E.P. Taylor, making vests for this famous horseman’s jockeys. She would also do alterations for a television news anchor. While living in Aurora, Henry built a concrete backyard swimming pool—one of his many building projects. But, “Henry was an entrepreneur at heart,” his son Peter explains. “He wanted to own his own business.”
“I remember my parents packing us up in the Volkswagen and driving for what seemed like hours looking at farms and all kinds of different properties,” Monika recalls. “My mother later told me she put her foot down when Dad wanted to buy a farm, neither one of them had any experience working on a farm and with 4 children all under the age of 10, it was a hard no! Finally, they settled on this little gas station with a convenience store and lunch counter.”
Henry’s chance came in 1968, as he had saved enough money to buy Norm’s Lunch, a restaurant on Lindsay Street in Fenelon Falls (the site is now Alliance Agri Turf). Norman Drinkwalter and Morley Elliot had founded this business in the late 1940s. It was diversified, in addition to being a restaurant, it also sold groceries, gasoline and rented cabins. The Sternberg’s brought their young family to Fenelon Falls. Monika, the eldest, was 10 and Peter, the youngest, just an infant. Mike and Dave were 7 and 6.
“At Norm’s Lunch, one side was a grocery counter,” Monika recalls. “Dad pumped gas and worked the counter along with Mom. The lunch counter was usually full when I got home from school and on the weekends, there were the farmers and the hydro workers coming in for coffee and gossip. It was always busy it seemed. The kids would come over from the high school for snacks. There were not too many places to go to at the time.” Monika notes. “I think he scared some of the kids who came to the convenience store because of his German accent. He had a big personality and a short temper.
I would help out after school and on weekends, the menu was pretty basic, we had sandwiches and ice cream. There was a little section of books. We lived behind the store, and during the summer my brothers and I would play baseball in the field behind the store with the neighbourhood kids: Wayne Perrin and his brother Ross, the Millers and the Fergusons. We would walk across the bridge to go to public school everyday, at the time it was at the other end of town, right up the hill. Most kids were bussed in from the farms around the town.”
A year or two after purchasing the business, Henry bought the lot next door and built the Burger Bar, a separate building that was located where the present-day Beer Store is now. We served burgers, hot dogs and fries. The Burger Bar did not have inside seating, just picnic tables outside. “By then I was 13 and I was put to work after school and on weekends flipping burgers and making fries,” Monika remembers. “It was a huge learning experience.” There was an intercom between the two restaurants, which operated simultaneously. “I had a cassette player and I would play the same song over and over again, “Sugar Sugar” sung by the Archies. My Dad came over the intercom and yelled at me, ‘SHUT IT OFF OR I’M GOING TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW!’ He couldn’t take it anymore!”
“There was an arcade game in the burger bar and we played on it when there were no customers,” Monika observes. “The Legion was across the street and we would get a lot of customers from there in the evenings, the place was busy!” Peter adds: “A lot of people would come over for a burger after the dances at the Legion on the weekend.”
Henry could be a restless spirit. He was interested in business, and it had been his idea to buy Norm’s Lunch, but to be there day-in and day-out was not in his nature. “We went to school and Mom could not drive,” Monika remembers. “Dad would go to get supplies and when things were quiet, he would hop in the car and drive around to ‘check out the competition,’ as he put it. He would often take one of us kids with him for company, as he drove to Rosedale or Coboconk, to grab a coffee and chat with other restaurant owners. Mom got fed up and demanded driving lessons so she could get out on her own. When she did get her license, she discovered Bingo and off she would go every week to the Legion, Lindsay Bingo or Bobcaygeon, meet up with friends and enjoy her night out.”
In the 1960s, Fenelon Falls had electric plants on both sides of the waterfall. The plant on the south side, originally built to service Lindsay, was the larger facility. The hydro workers often chatted at the counter while eating at Norm’s Lunch. “That’s how Dad found out that the power station was going up for sale, and he decided to bid on it,” Monika observes. “In 1971, he was the winning bidder and the next year construction began. I think he was happiest when he was working on a new project.”
“He built the Burger Bar, now it was time to build his dream restaurant,” Monika adds. “I was too young to remember details but I do believe he drew up his own plans and his design had to include a tower. Coming from Germany where he grew up at the Black Forest, there were the ancient castles and fortresses. Later on, when he built the house in Crane’s Bay, he also built a turret above the living room. He was a pretty good architect!”
“Dad loved castles, and he wanted to have his own castle,” Peter observes. “He wanted to build turrets on all four corners of the new restaurant. That is why there was a tower on the front of the restaurant. He had wanted to have another floor, which would have been hotel rooms.” In the end, Henry would settle for having a banquet hall downstairs, which was often used to host parties and Rotary Club Meetings, once the restaurant opened in 1973. “There were a ton of parties there, and I remember seeing our guests doing the chicken dance.”
“Our family’s living quarters were in the lower level right next to the party room. I would fall asleep listening to the Falls. In the summer, my brothers would climb down the cliffs and swim in front of the falls along with our dog Sally. Sometimes when the waterflow was low, they would walk across the top of the falls and dive into the bottom right in front of the restaurant. In the winter the falls would freeze and the mist would rise, it was so beautiful, a winter wonderland.”
While Norm’s Lunch and the Burger Bar served fast food, the Fallsview Restaurant was a German- Canadian sit-down restaurant, where the Sternberg’s could share some of the dishes that that they had enjoyed growing up. By then, it was legal to serve alcohol, when they had purchased Norm’s lunch, Fenelon Falls was a dry town, and the only establishment serving alcohol was the legion,” Monika recounts. “Mom would be at work by 7 am, to put on a roast beef, pork roast and sometimes turkey. She would boil potatoes and vegetables, while making salads. Many of the servers were Fenelon Falls Secondary School students working the weekends and evenings. Marie Elliot worked during the day with a couple of other ladies and while “my mother was always in the kitchen cooking, no one saw her. My Dad was not too pleased when some customers would mistake Marie for his wife!”
The popular dishes at the Fallsview Restaurant included roast beef, schnitzel, and cakes. Gertrud would make soups like chicken noodle and vegetable. “Mom was a very good cook and she loved baking cakes and tortes. She had German cookbooks that unfortunately were given away after the restaurant closed. “In the first few months, especially on Sundays, Dad closed the restaurant early simply because we ran out of food! Everyone came in after church, the place was packed. Then in the summer, the tourists started coming in. I remember having five or six plates stacked all along my arms backing into the swinging doors, barely missing the kids that ran all over the place.”
Peter continues, “Dad had a little office behind the cash register and collected the money. He paid attention to his customers. He would greet them and sit them down. Dad was a strong-willed person, but he mellowed over the years. When it wasn’t busy, he would blast the music, songs like James Last who played Jazz in a Big Band style, and “When You’re Smiling,” by Frank Sinatra.”
“Mom took pride in her looks, she had four kids before she was 30,” Monika says. “She loved to laugh, loved to make jokes and play cards. If it was slow we would be in the break room playing cards. If a customer came, they would have to wait until the hand was over. But at the same time, she was all about business. Both Mom and Dad were really focused on work. She grew up in a refugee camp, during the war because Germany was all bombed out. After the war the churches where the main source of clothing with donations coming in from all over the world.” Peter adds: “She was stronger willed than Dad in a lot of ways, with that post World War II mentality of working hard.”
Operating a restaurant required a lot of commitment. Six days a week “It was closed on Mondays, and that’s when we did our trips,” Peter explains. The Sternbergs did find time to enjoy Fenelon Falls’ attractions. “Mom and Dad would go to the Legion each weekend, while I would babysit,” Monika narrates. “We used to go bowling—that was the entertainment back then. And there was the movie theatre. I remember when the Planet of the Apes came out. I was terrified to walk across the bridge.” Peter would get a job working at the theatre, helping to rewind the reels so they would be ready to play the next night.
By the 1980s, Gertrud and Henry had worked in restaurants for a long time. She developed a large bunion from standing in front of a stove for so long, and had to have surgery. “She had to have constant care, the wound had to be cleaned and repacked every day,” Monika remembers. “I was working in Toronto, but I moved back home to look after her. I did some of the cooking, along with the other waitresses. I remember once, cooking a steak for a regular customer, he said it was the worst steak he every had! I still cannot cook steak! When Mom was better, I moved back to Toronto. Soon after, my parents decided to close the restaurant after Christmas in the winter for a couple of months. They went to Florida and eventually they bought a permanent place to travel down south in the winter.” Dad was ready to move on to something new. In 1984 they sold the restaurant to Manfred Becherer.
Gertrud and Henry lived in town for a while, but “Dad wanted to live out in the country so he bought property in Cranes Bay where he built his final house. My parents lived there until Dad died in 2007.” Their son Mike inherited his father’s love of building and would build a house next door, before moving on to a second new build on Aneva Court. Gertrud and Henry enjoyed spending their retirement years at Crane Bay, where they would stay until Henry passed away in 2007. It was a very different lifestyle than the many years they spent operating a restaurant.
This story is a memory and nobody’s memory is perfect. Sometimes details get a little mixed up, things get forgotten or overlooked, and the perspective is inevitably subjective. If you notice something that not right, have something you would like to tell us, or a memory to share the museum would be happy to hear from you: [email protected]
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
Box 179
50 Oak Street
Fenelon Falls, ON
K0M 1N0
